Vista - Autoplay. [please help]

Good day to everyone.
For a long time now i have a really big problem. Whenever I insert a CD/DVD or USB the autorun never pops up. So i concluded this is not a hardware problem. (1)
So what i did to try to solve it of course is to open Autoplay from Control Panel.
The settings were default so I changed them to "ask everytime".
I insert a device. Nothing. I STFW but found nothing. I run command sfc /scannow and nothing happened. I reboot. Nothing. I tried disabling UAC. Nothing.
Even when I right click to a Drive it doesnt has the Autorun selection.
Even worse when i right click i see some wierd letters on the mouse menu . (2)


So whatever i can think of is that either some kind of file in one of these devices/and or CD/DVDs.
I cant say for sure but i believe this started when I inserted an old DVD which had problems and couldnt be read. (And by that I mean that on the DVDs data some specific folders with files could be copied but from a point and after they couldnt be completely read and each and every time I was trying to copy them to HDD i would get an error and the copying would stop, though the DVD was burned successfully with Nero 6 on an old laptop with WinXP sp2.) (3)
And some extra information. I hadnt messed up with system or registry.
Everything is as I left it. (Except themes but i dont believe its that)
Now i wonder if anyone had such a wierd problem and/or could answer my (1) (2) (3) questions.
Thanks for your time, in advance.
Vic.